Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Urge overkill

One of my lasting regrets is that I missed the time our vicar talked to the teen group on Relationships, Squishy Stuff and All That. Apparently it contained very little the young people didn't already know about themselves and way too much they didn't already know about the vicar. As in, his addiction to certain teenage Urges, the time he first saw his wife naked ... WAY too much.

You have to remember that, stilted though it is, it's still probably more than boys were officially being told until then. The Revd Chad Varah founded the Samaritans after a girl in his care killed herself ... because she was having her first period and didn't know what was happening. You can't fault the motivation to be helpful, and its advice on generally healthy living, treating the opposite sex as friends rather than sex objects etc. is valid in any time period.

His uses for discarded cotton reels, on the other hand (page 18) might raise eyebrows.

Yes, we have moved on from this time, but that time itself had moved on from what was before it. Boys were considered ready for some, but not all information ...

The "semen" is discharged from the "penis" into the passage in the female body behind that through which the urine is discharged.

A particular bone of contention with Sid is that way too many boys apparently waste this "important fluid" deliberately. (Though in the absence of any females lying conveniently close to them it's hard to see why they would want to. [Yes, his all-important tip for making love is that the couple are lying close enough together for it to happen.]) Up with such Sid will not put, though he does concede that the habit, once acquired, may be difficult to give up. It's still doable, and without the slighest sense of irony he extols us in a little couplet:

"For the things that are easy have little regard,But always be glad for the things that are hard."